THE LIFE OF A DRUG MULE

Rohini Jones's path to prison was strewn with bad choices. She dropped
out of school at 15. She ran away from home and worked in a bar. She
began trafficking drugs from Trinidad to England.

But there is one bad choice Jones, 31, could have but didn't make.
It's one that may have had a result much worse than the four-year
stretch she's soon to finish at the Women's Prison.

She didn't swallow. Pellets, that is. They're condoms filled with
cocaine and wrapped till grape size. They've been known to burst in
the body of the carrier. The person dies in two hours.

"That was dangerous," she says, explaining why she refused repeated
requests to ingest the pellets. Her statement and the faint outrage in
her voice were ironically funny, considering she just related the
other risks she took.

Jones is one of a group of women telling their story to the media in
the run up to the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit
Trafficking-to be marked today - and as part of a campaign being run
by the National Drug Council. Called Eva Goes To Foreign, it targets
women, warning them of the terrible repercussions drug trafficking can
have on themselves and their families. Women convicted of drug
trafficking both here and abroad have been speaking on radio
programmes and at the NDC's roving exhibitions. (See Page 13.)

The campaign wagon will be on the Brian Lara Promenade today and
audiences might hear Jones sing. She intends to turn her life around
when her sentence ends later this year and try her hand at calypso.
She's composed a song that she performs at her public appearances.
It's called "The Message" and it shares insights brought by her arrest
and conviction.

I thought I coulda run when I see all them gun

But they'd a shoot without second thought

So the consequences of my crime I know I must now pay

A misguided woman who found herself going astray

So doh look at me as no animal just because I'm in jail

I'm a human being though I've managed only to fail

And yuh go tell meh, how can there be a message without a
mess?

And tell me, how can there be a testimony without a test?

So take these lessons that I bring and practise them earnestly.

So that you don't end up inside a jail house like me.

Jones sings in a clear, strong tenor; her delivery is confident; the
tune is sweetly melodic.

She's seated in a small office in the administrative section of the
prison. She's wearing the red prisoner's smock.

Next to her, dressed the same, is Angela Joseph, 36, another drug
trafficking convict due to end a four-year sentence this year.

Jones had worked for years, transporting cocaine between this country
and England, before she was finally caught. Joseph sold drugs for a
long period out of her home.

Both women had children and were in committed relationships. In other
words, they led largely "normal" lives while facilitating the sale of
a substance that took the lives of others, in more ways than through
death.

One of the positive effects of prison, says Jones, was that it forced
her to face the results of her previous occupation and regret her part
in it. "Whilst being here I've met people who have actually smoked the
drug that I was carrying, and I see how it has mashed up their life,"
she says.

Neither Jones nor Joseph blames her past for her foray into drug
trafficking. They have no traumatic childhood experiences to use as
excuses. They both didn't finish secondary school, but insist aborted
education wasn't at fault either. They wanted independence, money and
a comfortable lifestyle. Drug trafficking brought them these things in
a relatively quick and easy fashion.

Jones says she made up to $75,000 on a return trip. Joseph acquired
property, started legitimate businesses.

"It was me," says Joseph, quietly accepting sole responsibility for
her behaviour. "I wanted my own way." She's soft spoken and more
reserved than Jones.

Joseph grew up in a community where drug dealing was common. She ran
her trafficking "business" with her common-law husband, who was
kidnapped last year and is yet to be found.

Jones says her English mother was permissive and didn't beat, but
still "I wanted to do my own thing. Mummy was kinda keeping me back".
She gave up Form 3, left home and moved in with her sister.

She wants to dispel the notion that it's hard to make links with drug
wholesalers.

"People always say that. 'How you meet them? How you get involved with
them?'" she says. "They live in your neighbourhood! They're your
friends! You may be living somewhere and somebody next to you selling
drugs and you don't even know."

Both women were caught at periods in their lives when they had settled
into the practice and developed confidence that they wouldn't be captured.

Joseph was betrayed by a relative who sold her coke as part of a trap
set by police.

Jones was caught on her way to England from Tobago. (It was felt this
route was less risky.) Six kilograms of cocaine was sewn in the lining
of jeans folded in her suitcase. She describes the harrowing
experience of being searched at the airport knowing she was carrying
the drug.

"The guy started to search (my suitcase). Jesus Christ! That's when I
knew I was caught. He didn't find anything. He was closing it back. I
was like, 'Yeah, I got through.' And then another guy come. He say, 'I
want to search this suitcase.' He started picking up the clothes and
feeling the weight of them. He said, 'How these jeans so heavy, Miss
Jones?' I started crying."

The women discuss the negative effects of being jailed.

One was the disappointment, shock and shame felt by their
families.

Jones said her mother and siblings, who live in England, knew nothing
about her illegal activities. Her mother came to see her shortly after
her arrest. The older woman was in tears. Jones and Joseph no longer
have relationships with their children's fathers.

Another was the experience of jail itself. "You're locked in a cell.
You're told when to do everything," says Jones. "No amount of money
could ever compensate for that. It's not just your freedom, it's your
will taken away from you. It changes you drastically."

The women agreed the toughest part of their incarceration was the
separation from their children. Her children's performance in school
"dropped drastically", says Joseph. She has four daughters between 15
and four years old. Jones's five-year-old son didn't recognise her
when she saw him for the first time in three years last August. To see
children as young as hers she had to make a "special request", which
took ages to process. The children's father only brought her
ten-year-old son once because, Jones speculates, he feels the
experience was too much for the child.

"My children suffered the most," says Joseph as Jones nodded and
mumbled words of agreement. "It doesn't matter how much wealth you
have. It doesn't make up for the separation from your children."